Oh wait, the sidegrade mod doesn't have that diminishing returns because I didn't really work on it much. Go look at the Manufacturer Expanded mods I did, it really amps up weapons to a lethal level at end game gears... Edge Master Type 1 for example on a Holy Sword Scenario resulted in a 2.70x cut modifier on a Nodachi you started off with, and +11 Attack bonus LOL!

I should maybe ramp up the value of those weapons by 2x or higher so that these weapons cost a ton of money to buy.

Also, NPCs with good gear will most likely kill everything with worse gear, often times even if they get a bit out numbered. High end Catun gives enough attack and defense buffs that if said character is swarmed by a army of hungry bandits with sticks, the nerf on damage output of 'sticks' in general won't hurt him enough and allows him to wipe out half the bandits maybe?

What I did with the models is assigning a diminishing chance of getting a good grade on weapons off of dead bodies.

The odds of getting say the highest grade of Ancient on a dead person is like 50%, whilst lowest grade is 100%. I could tune it lower so it goes as low as 10% spectrum but I didn't need to bother much since the stats aren't that crazy high for the Ancient Manufacturer.

It's only at Catun, Skeleton, Edge, and Cross that balancing this is a lot harder.

You also have to take into account what the player is able to acquire early on due to the fact that those weapons are more easily obtainable. Everyone knows the trick by looting dead bodies near cities where the guards do all the work. Grabbing a reforged blade from a random dead enemy is now more likely. If that still isn't enough maybe you can put a probability script in that limits how many certain types of blades are on certain enemies? You could also just assign certain enemies to only have certain types of blades to make early, mid, and late game enemies feel like their proper difficulty.

I made a new mod called 'Manufacturers Expanded' with that idea in mind, using only vanilla manufacturers and expanding on it with new models, revamping the RPG stats.

With a basic test I found out a few things...

The game's enemies like dust bandits are a lot harder at random if they have a reforged blade, which grants slight buffs to their sabers. Damage of Ancient weapons in general are hitting harder, and looking at some cheap vendors early on, the atk/def ratio of most enemies other than starving bandits are generally higher now due to the weapon buffs, especially Ninja Guards and Traders, with Catun weaponry and Skeleton weaponry, they often can get good gear and have up to 60+ attack stat in vanilla + (my mod).

But you can't create your own list of armor grades:
Example - Prototype - Shoddy - Poor - Common - Standard - Mid Grade - High Grade - Specialist - Masterwork, etc.

I did some research, it's not possible with the FCS anyhow, to manipulate the armor grades.

You could create duplicate armors at the same grades with varying values of stats or defense, but that's a lot of work since you gotta reference it to EVERYTHING (characters, vendors, etc.)

Interesting. Thanks for the information. Have you looked at other mods to see if anyone else could do what you're trying to do with armor?

You would need to consecutively make chances of getting these 'rarer' and powerful items smaller and smaller, so that random enemies gives 'meh' stuff but might randomly have something very decent.

The only problem I have with modifying manufacturers is that it only applies to weapons. I looked into it, and there is NOTHING to let you modify armor tiers or grades (prototype / shoddy / standard / high grade / specialist / etc)

For example lets say Ancient category should have a cut multiplier from 0.10 to 1.25, and modify all existing 'models' to fit into a lower spectrum of this (this means they become utterly crap at dishing out damage even with skilled users).

You add in new models of said weapon to cover from crappy level 1, to level 100 grade 'relics'?

What about other manufacturers like Catun, Skeleton, etc? Well since there is only a blunt/cut/min.cut/weight to modify, you are kinda limited to how to expand on this... But since the vanilla values seems to set tiers to their qualities, you could fit it in somehow.

Vanilla:
Ancient -> Catun -> Skeleton -> Edgewalker -> Cross

Possibly Modded:
Using levels as a form to grade them;
Ancient (lv1 to Lv65) Max multiplier cap at say 1.5x
Catun (Lv25 to Lv50) Max multiplier cap at say 1.7x
Skeleton (Lv 50 to Lv 85) Max multiplier cap at say 2.0x
Edgewalker (Lv 60 to Lv 95) Max multiplier cap at say 2.2x
Cross (lv 75 to Lv100) Max multiplier cap at say 2.4x

It turns out that applying 'weapon level' in the editor from 1 to 100, is referring to how much of the set manufacturer's multiplier, and how much of it is used.

So if you have a weapon model set to lv50, and the manufacturer has a maximum cut multiplier set to 2.0x, then it uses 1x multiplier for that model.

This means it's possible to make a weapon manufacturer and model overhaul, with 'Low / Medium / High / Legendary' modifiers to make them very powerful stat wise, but may mess with other mods that modifies or edits much of these vanilla values.

Could you make a master list of these and post a pinned sub-thread on this page please?

It turns out that 'minimum cut damage' isn't very useful, I tried to adjust it really high and really low, but with a unskilled character it always hit 20 damage at 0~1 dex.

I made this mod to look into more 'manufacturers' and models with different effects. Basically you can find a weapon that is the exact same but different model hence higher buffs (attack/def only atm)...

Still experimenting to see how I can balance pros and cons in weapons found in vendors.
Only vendor list adjustments can be tested properly, If I want bandits to equip a model of the manufacturer I have to go over every single type of character and basically add it to their list.

Is this a mod that can buy better weapons?